Insomnia is a gross feeder. It will nourish itself on any kind of thinking, including thinking about not thinking. ~Clifton FadimanEver go to bed, feeling totally wiped out, almost to the point of exhaustion, then once your head hits the pillow, your brain doesn't shut off. Seriously....
let me give you an example:
You change into your comfy-cozie jams, brush your teeth, (or not depending how late it is) crawl into bed, breathe a heavy sigh, shut off the light, lean in to kiss your wonderful husband (or wife) and close your eyes after looking at the glowing green numbers on the alarm clock reading 12:03 a.m.
Then you lay there a bit longer, and decide it's time to turn over...yeah, if you lay on your side, you'll instantly fall asleep.
After a few minutes, you open you eyes to see the clock now reads 1:07 a.m.
You roll to your tummy now. You realize the experts say you shouldn't sleep on your stomach, but when you can't fall asleep quickly, this surely will do the trick.
You start making a mental note of what your checklist should read tomorrow when you get out of bed. You then realize you need to stop thinking and shut down. You peek one more time at the clock - 1:40 a.m.
Now you begin to become annoyed. You shift your position one more time. Back to your side. Then you remember you need to pay a bill before the 27th...yikes, that's only 2 days away. Thank God for Bill-Pay! You open you eyes one more time. It's now 2:12 a.m. At this point, quite frankly, you're pissed. You're tired, you want to sleep, you have a lot to do tomorrow before returning to the hectic work week, and your brain just isn't slowing down. AT ALL. Period.
You surrender. It's time to get out of bed. If you get up and perhaps read a bit, you'll become sleepy. This always works right? You proceed to read the last 3 days Newspapers. To your dismay, you still are not sleepy. As you're peeing for the 3rd time since you got out of bed, you think to yourself, the toilet could use a good cleaning. And the mirror. And the sink.
You decide if you're going this far, you might as well pick up the rugs to shake them outside. But you'll wait to do that until tomorrow. You'll just gather them and have them ready to go by the back door.
You move on to the kitchen. There aren't a lot of dishes in the sink, but enough that you decide you'll feel so much better if you hurry and wash them up, dry them and put them away. In this way, when you do become sleepy, and you know you'll need to sleep in tomorrow morning since you can't sleep tonight (or I guess you could say it's early tomorrow morning already?) this is one thing crossed off your "to-do" list. Good. Mission accomplished. Since you've already picked up those bathroom rugs to shake, you might as well pick up those kitchen throw rugs as well.
As you're placing both the bathroom rugs & kitchen rugs near the back door, you see a lone, dirty dish cloth from earlier chores laying on the floor for some reason. Hmmmm, how did this get here? You bend over, pick up the cloth and head to the basement where you'll throw in a load of towels. You head back upstairs, and see the stack of paperwork on the dining room table. Still not a hint of sleepiness.
You sort through the paperwork, needless to say, a bit hap-hazardly. You know you can finish this up in the afternoon. After you sleep in until about noon now.
You turn on the computer. Yeah, this is sure to make the bed bugs bite. Oohhh, that's not the right words I should use. How about, "yeah, this will certainly make Mr. Sandman" come to your house!" (Yes, that was much better than bed bugs...yuck.)
Computer boots up. You check your e-mail. You clean out your 280 unopened e-mails. You empty your spam folder. You empty your trash box. You open your blog page. You decide since it's been almost a month since your last post, you'll quickly write something. Perhaps a quote only. You love quotes. You find one that suits you perfectly. You post it at the heading of the page. And continue to tickity-tap the words describing your night. (Or should I say morning?)
One last glance at the clock: 4:57 a.m.
Geesh...you might as well make the coffee now!